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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23494375">Home Is in Your Head</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/superpowerlottery/pseuds/superpowerlottery'>superpowerlottery</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen, Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dimension Travel, Gen, Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine Universe, Time Travel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 09:48:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>13,527</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23494375</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/superpowerlottery/pseuds/superpowerlottery</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Having failed to defeat Kaguya, Sakura's teammates used up the last of their strength to send her back in time and prevent the war from ever taking place.</p><p>The jutsu worked. She was twelve years old once again, determined to avert the disaster of her original timeline.</p><p>So why did Shikamaru suddenly have a twin sister, and what business did she have taking Sakura's spot on Team Seven?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>162</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>706</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Heliocentrism — a Dreaming of Sunshine recursive collection</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sakura woke up to the sight of the familiar ceiling in her parents' old apartment. It was early morning, the first rays of sunshine streaming in through the gaps in the blinds. She remembered having blinds like these when she was twelve. It wasn't until later, when the cord had gotten stuck and the strings had tangled, that she'd replaced them with brand-new pink curtains. Then the entire village, including this building, had been destroyed by Pain.</p><p>She lifted up her hand, examining it almost mechanically. Her nails were short and neatly filed as they had always been. There was a scar on her index finger that looked like the result of reaching into her weapons pouch incorrectly. Other than that, the only mark of academy-grade training was some light callusing.</p><p>By the end, she had been too good a medic for imperfections like these, for all the good it had done her.</p><p>She clenched her fist. Unclenched it. Her fingers felt weak, the knuckles soft and lacking any of the conditioning Tsunade-shishou had beaten into her. Her hair was long again.</p><p>She stood up in a daze, looking around the room. Everything was almost, but not exactly, the way she remembered it. She supposed it was only to be expected; it had, after all, been over five years, and she had never quite reached the level of paranoia needed to start keeping track of the exact locations of her belongings in case somebody tampered with them while she was gone. Any classified documents she had worked on had always remained in the tower or the hospital and hadn't come anywhere near the apartment where her parents could find them.</p><p>Her desk was nearly bare, only a neat stack of notebooks in the corner. There was a calendar on the wall, opened to her final month at the academy. The day of the final exam was circled in red and underlined twice, which would have been useful if she knew what date it was today. Sure, they had aimed for the gap between graduation and team assignments, but this situation was completely unprecedented and there were no guarantees.</p><p>At least she knew she had already graduated, because her forehead protector was displayed proudly on the bookshelf.</p><p>She took a deep breath and exited the room, barefoot and still in her pajamas. Her mother was already in the kitchen, washing the rice while something simmered on the stove. She looked younger. Sakura had never even noticed her getting older.</p><p>She must have been dead by the end, though Sakura hadn't been there to see it.</p><p>"Morning, mom," she said.</p><p>Her mother startled. "Huh? Oh, it's you." She wiped off her hands on her apron. "Breakfast isn't ready yet. You were so tired after the exam yesterday, I thought you would sleep longer."</p><p>Jackpot. Sakura had been half-prepared to start asking circumspect questions, maybe go out to look for today's newspaper, since she could hardly let her civilian mother know she had traveled back in time to prevent the end of the world and thus didn't know what day it was - but <em> of course </em>she would bring up the exam. At this point in time, it would have been the most important event of Sakura's life.</p><p>She gave a shrug in reply. "I'll eat later. Don't worry about it."</p><p>There, she thought, pleased with herself. That was a normal thing for her twelve-year-old self to say. The most important thing, for now, was to act normal.</p><p>There was so much to do. Kill Kabuto to prevent him from resurrecting Madara. Kill Zetsu so that he wouldn't get the chance to unseal Kaguya. Inform Shishou of Pain's abilities, Obito's plans and Danzo's rogue faction of ANBU. But these were long term-plans, and there was only so much she could do as a genin without a team and with no connection to the current Hokage.</p><p>She spent the better part of the following week working on whipping this pitiful body into shape, with only a brief interruption when she remembered that as a new graduate, she was expected to report to the Hokage Tower to complete her ninja registration.</p><p>"You were supposed to do this within two days of passing the exam," the chunin behind the desk said, unimpressed. "It's been six days!"</p><p>It had been five years.</p><p>"I'm really sorry!" she cried, bowing repeatedly. "I was so excited about passing that it totally slipped my mind!"</p><p>The chunin looked her up and down and finally seemed to decide that she didn't look enough like a troublemaker to make a fuss over it. "I guess it's fine. You're just going to have to go here," he said, scribbling a room number on a post-it note, "and get your picture taken. Don't be surprised if they make you wait for a long time. They were supposed to be done with it by now."</p><p>"Thank you! I'm so sorry!" she said, bowing again.</p><p>Kakashi-sensei would have had a field day with this if he was here. Then again, she was going to see him - a younger version of him, alive once again - soon enough.</p><p>More than that, she was going to stop him from dying at Kaguya's hands. She was going to stop <em> everyone </em>from dying. Next to the enormity of that goal, minor setbacks like these barely seemed significant.</p><p> </p><p>The first indication that something had gone wrong came that very evening.</p><p>"Where have you been all day?" her father asked, looking up from the book he was reading in the living room. "That blond friend of yours came looking for you earlier."</p><p>Sakura drew a blank. "Blond friend?" she echoed. "Do you mean Ino?"</p><p>Her first, ridiculous thought was 'Naruto', except of course her father wouldn't have been nearly this casual about him seeking her out at home. Not to mention that at this age, Naruto and her hadn't been friends.</p><p>The problem was that the same was true with Ino. They had argued, sure, and raced each other to the academy all the time, but Sakura was almost certain that Ino hadn't actively sought her out until after the Chunin Exam.</p><p>"Yeah, that one," her father confirmed. "How many other blond friends do you have? Anything you want to share?" He winked, and not even the fact that she came from a future where he was probably dead could stop her from groaning.</p><p>Maybe, she considered, she was misremembering. Her memory of this period of her life clearly wasn't infallible. Either way, she would probably find out what Ino wanted at the graduation ceremony.</p><p>She excused herself and went to take a shower, exhausted from several days of trying to hammer serious physical conditioning into a body that was average by academy standards. There was only so much progress one could make in a week, but it was better to start sooner rather than later.</p><p>When the day of team assignments finally came, she slunk out of the house over an hour early, resolved to avoid any more tardiness. She made her way through the village at a sedate pace, still not quite used to seeing it like this. It wasn't undamaged, exactly - there were signs of repairs having been done all over, shoddily thatched roofs and the occasional mismatched section of wall - but <em> old </em>. Most of these houses were probably older than she was. The Hokage Tower and some of the buildings surrounding it were as old as Konoha itself. It was odd to think that in her future, all of this had been destroyed with a single jutsu.</p><p>She was the first to arrive at the classroom and watched her former classmates stream in one by one. Some of them were people she remembered running into once or twice around the village, some she was pretty sure she had never met again after graduating, some whose names she didn't even remember, and some-</p><p>Well.</p><p>Sasuke looked young. It shouldn't have been surprising, when all the others looked so much younger as well and her own reflection in the mirror was that of a twelve-year-old girl, but somehow, it still caught her off-guard to see him with his Leaf forehead protector and baby fat on his cheeks. The look on his face was impassive, but it wasn't the perfect cold mask it had become after his defection. Nothing about his countenance radiated danger. Mostly, he just looked bored.</p><p>"Sakura!" Ino exclaimed from halfway across the classroom. "You didn't wait for me!"</p><p>"Huh?" Sakura asked.</p><p>Ino approached her. She looked pretty much like her seventeen-year-old self, except smaller and with less uncovered skin. "I was just at your house and your mother said you left already," she said, hands on her hips. "And where have you been all week? I couldn't get a hold of you at all."</p><p>"I, uh..." Sakura said uncertainly. "I was... busy?"</p><p>"Sheesh," Ino said, plopping down in the neighboring seat like that was a normal thing for her to do. "I went to see Shikako too and I'm pretty sure she also spent the whole week studying."</p><p>Sakura had no idea what was going on or who Shikako was, but if Ino was going to act differently this time around, there wasn't much she could do to stop her.</p><p>"Really? Studying what?" she asked, less because she wanted to know and more to avoid an awkward silence. Presumably, this Shikako person was just one of Ino's many friends. There had been times, after they had mended their friendship and started spending more time together, when Sakura had been baffled by the sheer number of people Ino knew.</p><p>"I don't even know," Ino said. "She was reading a book the size of- oh, there she is."</p><p>"Who?" Sakura asked, gaze sliding towards the door. It was... Shikamaru?</p><p>"<em>Shikako</em>," Ino said, in a tone that clearly communicated 'are you blind?' and possibly 'did you hit your head?'. And yes, now that she properly looked, there was a girl with the Nara clan crest on her shoulder by Shikamaru's side. She wore her dark hair in a braid and her clothes were all rather generic shinobi colors. Sakura had assumed she was one of the other civilian-born kunoichi at first glance.</p><p>"Oh, right, didn't see her there," she said quickly, since that was apparently what was expected of her. She very deliberately did not frown. Had there been any Nara other than Shikamaru in her class? Would she have remembered a detail like that?</p><p>Shikamaru said something that Sakura couldn't hear from this distance. The girl - Shikako, apparently - said something back. Then they split apart, Shikamaru heading towards the back of the class where Chouji sat, while the girl...</p><p>The girl sat down next to Ino.</p><p>"Morning, Sakura. Morning, Ino," she said. "Are you ready for team assignments?</p><p><em> Act normal, </em> Sakura reminded herself, racking her brain for something her twelve-year-old self might have said in this situation.</p><p>"I hope I'm on a team with Sasuke-kun," she said.</p><p>"Ugh, I wish," Ino said, face sinking into her hands. "I'll probably end up with those two slackers." </p><p>The Nara girl merely smiled, her face communicating nothing in particular. </p><p>Thankfully, there wasn't much time for conversation after that. Iruka-sensei marched into the classroom with the air of a shinobi trying to conceal an injury, and that was on top of the scrapes and bruises that were clearly visible. Probably on his back, Sakura diagnosed automatically. Serious enough to require heavy bandaging, based on the way he was holding himself, but not serious enough to get healed completely. It was tempting, as a medic, to heal every small injury that came through the hospital doors, but all that would result in was a lot of chakra-exhausted medics and nobody to act in case of a real emergency.</p><p>That, or there was damage very close to Iruka-sensei's spine, in which case whoever was on duty at the emergency room may have decided to let it heal on its own for fear of somehow making things worse.</p><p>Had this happened the first time around, too, and she just hadn't noticed? Sakura was pretty sure she hadn't done anything in the past week that could have caused a chunin instructor at the academy to be attacked.</p><p>"Team one," he said, snapping Sakura out of her contemplations, "will be Yobirin Suzu, Sakura Haruno and Jiro Watanabe."</p><p>What?</p><p>He went on, completely oblivious to Sakura's predicament. Team Two consisted of Ami and two boys whose names she didn't know. She was pretty sure she'd seen the kunoichi who was placed on Team Five working a desk job at the tower some two years into the future. Neither of those things mattered, because she wasn't on the same team as Naruto and Sasuke.</p><p>"Team seven is Sasuke Uchiha, Naruto Uzumaki and Shikako Nara," he said, and Sakura wanted to scream.</p><p> </p><p>"Jealous?" Ino teased later, when they were dismissed for lunch break. "You don't get to be on a team with Sasuke-kun after all."</p><p>Sakura didn't understand. All she had to fall back on were standard infiltration protocols, vague directions she had memorized in the academy and never seen put into practice. It felt off thinking about it in those terms, when the only thing she was infiltrating was her own life and the person she was impersonating was herself, but she couldn't afford to get caught. Not yet.</p><p>"What are you talking about?" she asked. "You're not on his team either."</p><p>Ino slumped. "That's right. That honor goes to Shikako. Too bad it's completely wasted on her."</p><p>Sakura had no idea what that meant, but the Nara girl didn't act like she found the comment particularly strange. "Whatever you say, Ino. I should probably, y'know," she made a vague hand gesture in Naruto's direction.</p><p>The younger Naruto, with the goofy orange jumpsuit and the pudgy cheeks, looked ecstatic to see her. Like they knew each other.</p><p>They all knew her, Sakura realized with horror. Ino and Naruto and Shikamaru and even Iruka-sensei. It was only Sakura who had never seen this person before.</p><p>The thing was, the technique Naruto and Sasuke had used had been unique and completely untested. So much so that even its inventor, the Sage of Six Paths, had claimed that nothing like it had ever been attempted in the entire history of mankind. Sakura could see why; it had required Naruto's chakra - <em> all </em>of Naruto's chakra - along with that of all nine Bijuu, and even then, the only way to activate it had been using Sasuke's Rinnegan. All of that in order to put her in a position where she could make things better.</p><p>She hadn't understood how the technique worked, not really, but she'd known that there was a chance it would fail. That it might drain all of Naruto's chakra for nothing, leaving only Sasuke and herself to combat Kaguya as every other human being withered away under the influence of the Infinite Tsukuyomi, or maybe send her a few hours back instead of the years they'd been aiming for. </p><p>This wasn't either of those things. This was just strange.</p><p>Sakura spent the lunch break at her desk, barely touching the bento her mother had prepared. She was no less confused by the end of it than she had been at the start.</p><p>"Team one with me," the man who was apparently her new sensei said. He was precisely on time, wore the jounin uniform with no alterations and exited the classroom through the door like a normal person. Sakura hated him on sight.</p><p>She followed him outside, flanked by the two boys, Yobirin and Jiro, who were conversing in low tones behind her back. She racked her brain for information about any of them. Jiro's face was vaguely familiar, but she knew nothing about his skill as a ninja. Yobirin was easier because his rectangular cheek tattoos denoted him as a member of one of those clans that specialized in medicine. He had enrolled into the medical program around the time Sakura had become Tsunade's apprentice, which meant, what, that he had gotten a taste of active duty and didn't like it? Or that this team had failed the first time around?</p><p>As for the jounin, she thought she might have seen him before as a patient in the hospital, but she could just as easily be confusing him with someone else.</p><p>He led them as far as the trees near the front entrance of the academy. "My name is Takahiro and I've been assigned as your team's instructor. Your teacher at the academy told you that you'll be working in three-man cells under a jounin, didn't he?"</p><p>Sakura and the two boys all made sounds of agreement.</p><p>"What he likely didn't tell you," Takahiro said, "is that these teams will only become official if the genin pass a secondary test. Please meet me tomorrow at-"</p><p>Sakura did her best to look surprised, but it turned out she didn't need to, because the only reaction Yobirin showed was a resigned sigh.</p><p>"What?!" Jiro yelled, the only one disturbing the silence. "But what happens if we fail?"</p><p>"That will depend entirely on you," Takahiro said, which was probably better than Kakashi-sensei's blatant lie about most of them going back to the academy, but still entirely unhelpful. "As I was saying, meet me tomorrow at seven o'clock at the entrance to training ground fifty-three. You're dismissed."</p><p>He looked like he was about to turn and leave.</p><p>"Uh, sensei," she said uncertainly. "Shouldn't we be doing introductions and stuff?"</p><p>"I've read your files," he said. "And since all of you were classmates in the academy, shouldn't you know each other already?"</p><p>Jiro snickered. Yobirin joined in after a second. Sakura thought she should probably be above arguing with preteen boys.</p><p>"Shut up," she said anyway.</p><p> </p><p>That afternoon, she took apart first her room and then the rest of the house, combing through everything far more thoroughly than she had at any point during the past week. She didn't find much, but what she did find was damning. Her academy report cards, which were kept neatly in a folder on her bookshelf, were about the same as before, except she was convinced her taijutsu scores had never been this high. There was a red piece of cloth in her drawer which, upon further examination, was the red ribbon Ino had given her years ago. The one Sakura clearly remembered returning the day she had received her forehead protector. And, worst of all, she found a photo of herself, Ino and that Nara girl, all no older than eight, sitting together on the veranda of a traditional-looking house.</p><p>Sakura really, really didn't understand. None of these things seemed related at all. How could the jutsu have malfunctioned in such a way as to give her slightly better grades, prevent her from fighting with a friend and <em>retroactively make an extra person</em>?</p><p>Who was Shikako Nara, anyway? Shikamaru's sister, or a cousin? Had she existed at all in the original timeline? </p><p>Even if she had, it sure as hell hadn't been here, as a member of Team Seven.</p><p>Sakura fell into bed, strands of her long hair falling in her face. Regardless of how strange this all was, she still had to pass her jounin's test tomorrow.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Does anyone still do the DoS recursive thing?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Yo, you guys are all insane. I've never had this many reviews on a single chapter in my life. Thank you so much.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Training ground fifty-three was nothing more than a small patch of forest directly under the northern wall. There was no fence to denote where it ended and the neighboring training grounds began, only a fading wooden sign by the side of the road and a gradual transition of trees into clearing. On her way here, Sakura had passed by the Hyuuga compound, an apiary and several chicken coops. The fact that this place was on the list of low-security training grounds available to genin was the only reason she managed to find it at all.</p><p>There wasn't much in the way of open ground, she thought critically. A lot of cover, which would have been an advantage for most Konoha shinobi, but not for her. She could fight a jounin. She couldn't necessarily <em> find </em>one.</p><p>No, she was getting ahead of herself. How much skill should she even display? Too much would look suspicious. Too little, and she might fail. Even if she did manage to pass this test while pretending to only have the skills she'd acquired at the academy, it would raise further questions later on if she ever found herself in a situation that required the use of medical jutsu - or worse, enhanced strength.</p><p>Dammit. She was supposed to be out by the bridge right now, waiting alongside her old teammates for Kakashi-sensei to arrive. It would have been fine. She could have made up some vague story about admiring Tsunade of the Legendary Sannin so much she tried to recreate her techniques. It would certainly have raised a few eyebrows, but Sakura at this age hadn't had enough contact with her peers for anyone to be able to ascertain what she got up to in her free time.</p><p>Except now she apparently had two close friends, one of whom was a complete unknown.</p><p>"Oh, man," Yobirin's voice sounded, cutting through the early-morning birdsong and rustling of leaves. "I hope this isn't going to be too difficult. I thought graduating meant we're done with exams."</p><p>"I still can't believe my dad didn't tell me about this," Jiro said. "I asked him yesterday and he said he'd forgotten all about it."</p><p>Yobirin stepped off the dirt road, heading towards the trees. "I totally knew something was up. From the moment I got my forehead protector, my older sister wouldn't stop laughing at me." Then he finally seemed to spot Sakura. "Oh, it's you," he said.</p><p>"Good morning," she said, going for a smile. If they were meant to work together, then she supposed she should try to be friendly, no matter how little she wanted to be here.</p><p>The boy didn't greet her back. Instead, he marched up to her and pointed a finger straight into her face. "Hey Sakura," he said. "I really want to pass this test, so you better not make us fail. Do you understand?"</p><p>Sakura blinked. Back at the medical program, she had never gotten the impression that he particularly liked her, but there was a difference between not liking someone and actively picking a fight.</p><p>She swatted his hand away. "I should be the one saying that. Do you think I want to fail?!"</p><p>"What can you even do?" Jiro asked, coming up to her as well. "I kicked your ass the last time we sparred at the academy."</p><p>Had he? From what she remembered of taijutsu class, she had mostly sparred against other girls. On the rare occasions she had been paired up against boys, it had always been the ones near the bottom of the class.</p><p>The more important question was what the two of them could do. Her gut feeling said 'not much'.</p><p>"Well," she said, perhaps not as firmly as she would have liked, because she still wasn't sure how to handle this. "I've been training a lot since then."</p><p>"Training at what? Did you teach yourself to become an even bigger bookworm?" Jiro mocked, and this was how their new sensei arrived to the scene of them bickering like children. </p><p>The man sighed. "Alright, let's make this quick."</p><p>He led them towards the center of the training ground - not to a clearing, because there weren't any here, just a gap between the trees. There were no bells or an alarm clock anywhere on his person.</p><p>"So, sensei," one of the boys asked impatiently, "what do we do now?"</p><p>"Yeah, what exactly is this test?" the other added.</p><p>"It's very simple," Takahiro said. "The three of you will try to attack me, and I will assess your capabilities. If I decide you're good enough, you will pass."</p><p>Sakura remained silent, hands clenching into fists. Was there a trick to this? Some kind of a second layer, testing something other than their skill in combat? But no, this wasn't like Kakashi's test. There was no setup, no motivation to compete against each other, barely even a mission objective.</p><p>Jiro, it turned out, was confused for a different reason. "You mean all three of us at once?"</p><p>Their sensei showed neither amusement nor annoyance at the question. From what she had seen of him so far, he didn't seem like a particularly expressive man. "That's what I said, isn't it?" he asked. "You may begin."</p><p>He leapt up, getting out of their immediate vicinity, and landed on a tree branch.</p><p>"Alright! This'll be a piece of cake!" Yobirin exclaimed.</p><p>"Yeah, if it's three against one, you don't stand a chance!" Jiro added, sliding into a ready stance.</p><p>"Idiot!" Sakura snapped. "There's no way three genin can beat a jounin!"</p><p>"Are you scared, Sakura?" the boy asked smugly. "It's okay, Yobirin and I have this handled."</p><p>Their sensei looked down at them from his branch. "You can begin anytime," he reminded.</p><p>The two boys took the academy-standard route and ran off to hide in the foliage. Sakura saw no reason to do otherwise. She circled him, jumping from branch to branch, deliberately avoiding any chakra-based stealth techniques. </p><p>Should she try to approach her teammates? It didn't sound like they were being tested for teamwork specifically, but that didn't preclude the possibility that Takahiro would fail them for running off on their own simply because it made them look less competent. That, however, was a moot point unless the boys were willing to work with her.</p><p>She suppressed her annoyance. This was like Sai getting assigned to Team Seven all over again - a teammate she wanted nothing to do with due to the circumstances, and a really annoying one to boot. In the end, it really hadn't been his fault that he had no social skills, any more than it was the fault of these two random twelve-year-olds that the goddamn time travel jutsu hadn't worked properly.</p><p>Shikako Nara was probably waiting for Kakashi-sensei right now, and would be for several more hours. <em> Serves her right </em>, she thought.</p><p>There was a whistle of metal in the air. Out of the four kunai, only one was headed directly for their sensei, the rest about to embed themselves harmlessly into the tree trunk to his right. This way, the most obvious place to dodge would be to the branch to his left, where - yes, there it was, a rustling of the leaves that didn't look to be caused by the wind.</p><p>Since there hadn't been enough time to set up a kunai launcher with a remote trigger, this had to mean the boys were coordinating their attacks.</p><p>The jounin could have done any number of things, like knocking the kunai out of the air, or leaping past before they had time to reach him, or simply going up or down instead, but clearly chose to humor their tactic. It was Jiro who leapt out of the bushes - three of him, in fact.</p><p>"Alright, get ready to go down!" the one in the middle said. Maybe he didn't know how to make clones that could talk.</p><p>The jounin easily dodged the brace of shuriken thrown at him while ignoring the ones thrown by the clones. They disappeared upon contact with his skin, dissolving into chakra smoke. Then he was on the ground directly in front of the boy, knocking the next bunch out of his hand before he had the chance to throw them. </p><p>Jiro either chose to let the clones disappear or simply couldn't hold them while simultaneously trying to punch the jounin in the face.</p><p>His taijutsu was... decent, in the sense that he performed most of his kata correctly, but his reaction time was painfully slow and he didn't seem to know how to react once it became clear that none of his blows were landing. Where Kakashi-sensei had reveled in messing with Naruto during the bell test, Takahiro either blocked or avoided every hit with bland efficiency, a solid wall for the boy to display his skill against.</p><p>If this was the level she was supposed to replicate, Sakura wasn't sure she could do it.</p><p>"Is this all you can do?" Takahiro asked, his words as bland as his movements. "I can't let you pass with just this."</p><p>Jiro gave out a frustrated growl and leapt into another attack. It was sloppy, the kind that wouldn't do much good even if it landed. Takahiro didn't let it either way, knocking his arm from its course with a simple swipe and adding a kick to the stomach for good measure. Escalating the fight, or finishing it; Sakura couldn't tell which.</p><p>She gathered her chakra, clasping her hands together in preparation for a hand seal. It would do her no good to wait any longer. Takahiro hadn't set a time limit, but he did say he wanted to have this over with quickly.</p><p>She watched his feet, watched his right arm swing back for another blow, calculated the trajectory and realized he was about to fling Jiro straight into the spot where Yobirin was hiding. There were no obvious targets for the replacement jutsu, so this was going to be a hack job, but she doubted she was going to get a better opportunity.</p><p>Besides, she <em> was </em>pretending to be twelve.</p><p>She appeared in midair in a cloud of chakra smoke, her back to a tree at Takahiro's eight o'clock. The branch she had replaced herself with crashed violently into the foliage. His shoulders, already in motion, stiffened in a way that signified he'd sensed her.</p><p>She kicked off the tree. No chakra to her feet, just this body's meager strength. Takahiro gave Jiro a shove that sent him flying and turned around to react to her attack, then her follow-up attack, making it all look like one continuous motion.</p><p>"Sakura?!" Jiro yelled from where he'd landed, a couple of meters away. "What are you doing here?"</p><p>Sakura ignored him, trying for a kick to the stomach and getting her ankle caught for her trouble. She twisted in the hold and tried to punch the jounin instead, very deliberately resisting the urge to use chakra to enhance her muscles. Her bare fist hit his gloved open palm, ineffectual.</p><p><em> I bet he couldn't do all of this while reading porn, </em> she thought petulantly.</p><p>He let go of her ankle and used the freed up hand to reach for a kunai, swinging it at her neck in a clearly telegraphed motion. Muscle memory told her to block with a kunai of her own, while Shishou's training dictated she should sidestep. Caught between two competing instincts, she opted for neither, jumping back for distance instead.</p><p>Her feet landed in a patch of mud and dried leaves. From the periphery of her vision, she could see Yobirin creep out of the bushes and crouch down by Jiro's side, doing nothing in particular. Since today seemed like the day for academy-grade jutsu, she created three clones to rush at the jounin. In theory, this would have allowed her to obscure his vision and attack from a different direction. In practice-</p><p>She rolled out of the way of a brace of kunai, two headed for her knees, one for her brachial plexus. The jounin was perched high up in the branches, looking down impassively. This had been the biggest display of speed he had shown in the entire test so far. Whether it had been truly fast, or whether this body's ability to quickly interpret visual stimuli was as underdeveloped as its muscle mass, she couldn't say.</p><p>He threw another kunai at her, and then another, and another, sending her running. A glance in the direction of her teammates confirmed that they were getting the same treatment. The easiest way to make him stop - aside from simply waiting for him to run out of weapons - would be to knock him down along with the tree he was standing on. Should she do that? What level of combat ability was he even testing for?</p><p>Unable to make a decision, she bolted up the nearest tree instead. Closing the distance between her opponent and herself was almost always a good thing. If nothing else, he wouldn't be able to pelt her with metal from above if he was no longer above her.</p><p>He allowed her to make it all the way up, pausing in his assault as though to see what she would do.</p><p>"Taijutsu again?" he asked, rebuffing her with the ease of a jounin fighting a genin. "Can't you do anything else?"</p><p>She bit back a sharp reply. This was bad.</p><p>He performed a leg swipe meant to throw her off his branch. She didn't avoid it. If hand-to-hand combat and dodging wasn't what he wanted to see, then there was no point.</p><p>She caught herself on a lower branch, cursing under her breath. She couldn't afford to fail. Whatever would happen to her then, whether or not she would be allowed into the Medic Corps without a recommendation from Shishou, it would still result in a huge setback to her ability to take missions. What would be left for her then, other than to report in with her future knowledge and hope someone else would act on it while she sat idle on the sidelines once again?</p><p>More importantly, what was left for her to do <em> right now </em>? She couldn't use her enhanced strength, not without calling attention to the fact that she hadn't used it so far.</p><p>Not unless-</p><p>There had been a time, right after she had learned the theory behind Shishou's style, when even the most basic of enhanced punches had taken her nearly a minute to execute. She would stand in the center of the training ground, perfectly stationary, and painstakingly go through the steps of channeling chakra to her hand to protect it from the impact, counter-reinforcing her arm and shoulder against the recoil and anchoring herself to the ground so as not to fly away when it shattered beneath her feet - all of that, before she ever got around to channeling the chakra she would use in the attack itself. And then she would double-check everything, because failure could result in the loss of a limb.</p><p>Of course, Shishou hadn't allowed her to remain on that level for long.</p><p>Maybe if she could make it look difficult now… like something she needed time to charge up, rather than something she could use instantly in the middle of a fight...</p><p>She dropped to the ground. Takahiro's face wasn't visible from here, but the two boys had taken to the trees. With any luck, he would wait for them the way he had for her.</p><p>She planted herself at the base of the tree. It was one of the big ones, significantly larger than her arm span in diameter. She went through the steps slowly and deliberately, swinging her arm back in an exaggerated motion.</p><p>Then she punched the trunk clean off.</p><p>It crashed down in a sweeping motion. Sakura jumped out of the way, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see the boys doing the same. "What the fuck?!" one of them shouted.</p><p>There was a moment when Takahiro visibly lost his footing as the branch he'd been standing on was suddenly gone. Had this been a real fight, she would have tried to capitalize on the opening. As it was, she stood glued to the ground, wondering if this had been a mistake. A second later, and he was gone in a cloud of chakra smoke.</p><p><em>'Replacement?'</em> she thought, but no, there was nothing in his place. The Body Flicker Technique, then.</p><p>The tree hit the ground crown-first. Sakura turned around, scanning her surroundings for any sign of Takahiro. It turned out she needn't have bothered, because he approached her on foot, signing at her to stand down.</p><p>"That's enough for now," he said, an indecipherable expression on his face. What did he mean? Had he made a decision? Was she going to fail?</p><p>"Sensei?" she asked cautiously.</p><p>He looked at Jiro, then at Yobirin, then back at Sakura. He sighed.</p><p>"Fine," he said. "I'll allow it."</p><p>She sank to her knees in relief.</p><p> </p><p>In the end, the test had lasted all of fifteen minutes. "Meet me at the tower at the same time tomorrow. I'll have booked a training ground by then," Takahiro said, business-like as he'd been all along, and left.</p><p>On her way home, Sakura sent a mournful look to the street that led towards her old team's training ground. There was no real excuse for her to go there. If asked, she wouldn't even be able to explain how she knew they were there. If she tried to do it covertly, Kakashi-sensei would certainly notice. It would be a deviation from the behavior that was expected of her, which was precisely what she was trying to avoid.</p><p>That didn't stop her from wishing.</p><p>Since it was still so early, she allowed herself a meaningless detour to the hospital. It looked exactly as she remembered it from before Pain's attack, a wide building with light-colored walls and the kanji for 'hospital' on a red sign at the front. She had spent so much time here after becoming Tsunade's apprentice that it had felt almost like a second home. She liked hospital work, liked the unrelenting pace of it and the knowledge that, for once, she was actually being useful.</p><p>She circled the building and spotted two familiar nurses out on lunch break. One of them glanced up at her as she passed by. There was no recognition in her eyes.</p><p>Sakura had no excuse to go inside here, either. </p><p>Now that the test was over, it felt meaningless. Just a short while ago, she had participated in a battle more destructive than anything in recorded shinobi history, met the Sage of Six Paths and witnessed the activation of a genjutsu so strong it single-handedly put an end to all of humanity. Today, she had very briefly sparred with some jounin. She hadn't even gotten a chance to test her current capabilities, not to any useful extent, because both of them had been holding back.</p><p>She wondered, briefly, where Takahiro had been during the war. Maybe he had been one of the thousands of ninja hanging back uselessly while people like Gai-sensei and the First Hokage had done all the fighting. Maybe he had died earlier, in the initial wave of Zetsu clones and Edo Tensei. Hell, she had no way of knowing if he had even still been around by the time the war had started.</p><p>She spent a few hours training and came back home in time to eat lunch, which was why she was in the kitchen doing dishes when the doorbell rang.</p><p>"Sakura?" Ino asked loudly.</p><p>Sakura was momentarily torn between joy and horror at hearing her voice - joy at getting to see her again, horror at having to navigate the minefield that was their changed relationship. It didn't matter either way, because it wasn't like she could ignore a guest.</p><p>"I'm here!" she shouted back, dried off her hands, headed for the door-</p><p>-and froze.</p><p>"Oh, there you are," her mother said, closing the door behind the two girls who had just entered. "Your friends are here to see you."</p><p>Ino was bent down, undoing the fastenings on her shoes. Shikako Nara simply toed hers off. Like she belonged here. Like she had every right to come to Sakura's home uninvited.</p><p>"Yeah," Sakura said weakly. "I can see that."</p><p>Her mother left the three of them alone with an ominous-sounding 'have fun!', and Sakura had no choice but to lead her two guests upstairs. Ino shoved past her into the room, worry pulling at her young face.</p><p>"What happened, Sakura?" she asked. "Shikako said her sensei gave her team a test. Yours did too, right?"</p><p>The Nara girl trailed in after her, looking vaguely troubled. Sakura had to consciously resist the urge to keep her gaze trained on her at all times. </p><p><em>Stop it,</em> she admonished herself. There would be no point to doing this, to overthinking every facet of where she went and who she talked to, if she just ended up giving herself away by acting strange during a normal conversation.</p><p>"Yeah," she said. "It was nothing complicated. We just had to fight him."</p><p>That didn't seem to be the answer Ino was looking for. "And?" she pushed. "Did you pass?"</p><p>Oh, right. That was the important part.</p><p>"We did," she said, doing her best to look happy about it. She wasn't sure it worked.</p><p>She hadn't really had a choice, was the thing. If she hadn't used Shishou's super-strength technique, there was a good chance she would have failed the test, which was an option she didn't even want to contemplate. But that decision had come with complications, namely that if it got back to any ninja who actually knew her, she would have a lot of explaining to do.</p><p>How close was she supposed to be to these two? Did they train together? If she claimed she had started working on a new technique a while back and kept it a secret, would they believe her?</p><p>It was clear that, at least for the moment, no word of it had reached them. Ino just looked relieved. Actually, so did the Nara.</p><p>"What was it like?" the girl asked, settling down on top of the covers on Sakura's bed.</p><p>Ino joined her as well. "Yeah, how was your sensei? And were you okay working with Yobirin Suzu? He's such a jerk!"</p><p>Neither of them looked like they were planning to leave anytime soon.</p><p>"It was fine," Sakura said, pulling out her desk chair and sitting down across from them. She racked her brain for something innocuous to say. "Our sensei seemed pretty bored the whole time. And Yobirin didn't really do anything. Even Jiro was more useful than him."</p><p>Ino gave out a mean-spirited laugh. "I knew that guy was all talk." Her expression shifted to something more serious. "Sucks for you though, being stuck on a team with the two of them. I mean, Shikamaru and Chouji are both annoying, but at least they aren't bullies."</p><p>Sakura shrugged. In all honesty, she didn't think Team One would be kept together for long. There wasn't really a point to having two medics on a three-man team.</p><p>But this talk of teams reminded her- "It's fine. I can handle him. More importantly, Shikako, how did your test go?"</p><p>"I knew it!" Ino said, pointing at her. "You just want to hear about Sasuke-kun."</p><p>She also wanted to hear about Naruto and Kakashi-sensei, and to gather what information she could about the Nara's capabilities, and to take the attention off of herself for as much of this conversation as possible for fear of slipping up and saying something suspicious. None of those were things she could say. "You mean you don't, Ino?" she asked instead, sly.</p><p>Ino as good as confirmed it when Shikako started retelling the events of the bell test, not asking questions about Sasuke, but rather making interjections that made it clear she had heard the entire story already. Shikako was a good storyteller - a bit sparse on the details, especially when it came to the techniques everyone had used, but clear and concise when it came to her motivations and the strategy involved. Apparently, she had preempted Kakashi-sensei's attempt at pitting them against each other by telling Naruto and Sasuke that she would give them the bells, thus passing the test under completely different circumstances than Sakura had.</p><p>"Did you know?" she wondered.</p><p>Shikako looked at her, not comprehending the question. "Know what?"</p><p>"That your sensei was lying when he said only two of you would pass," Sakura clarified. If the answer was yes, then she was definitely smarter than Sakura had been at that age. If she hadn't, it would mean she'd been willing to give up her chance to become a real ninja for nothing, which... well, Sakura herself had suggested something like that to Sasuke back then - 'Why not quit and just try again next year?' - and she'd gotten her reality check pretty soon afterwards.</p><p>Shikako blinked. "Well, I didn't <em>know</em>," she said, "but I've never heard of a team only partially passing?"</p><p>She didn't sound certain of it herself, but at least it was a logical reasoning, so Sakura let it go.</p><p>The two girls left eventually, Shikako claiming she had some kind of clan business to attend to and Ino following along. Though they hadn't done anything wrong, Sakura couldn't say she was particularly sorry to see them go.</p><p>That was just the thing. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with Shikako Nara. In the rather limited scope of their interactions so far, she seemed nice enough. Quiet. A bit plain, for a clan kid. She probably hadn't done anything to take away Sakura's place on Team Seven aside from getting better grades, and most certainly hadn't <em>known</em> that that place didn't belong to her. </p><p>She just... wasn't supposed to exist.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Somebody please tell me if any of the characters are OOC. I suck at character voices.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I wish I could say there's a good reason why this chapter took me four months to post. I basically just got stuck trying to watch Sakura-centric filler and figure out what a specific canon character was doing while Shikako wasn't present. Honestly, I'm way past the point where I can sit down and binge-watch anime episodes without wanting to die.</p><p>On a related note, there's a huge mistake in chapter 1. I thought Sakura gave the ribbon back to Ino when they stopped being friends in the academy, but it actually happened after graduation. I'll probably have to go back and fix that.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sakura hadn't given much thought to what team training under Takahiro would be like and how he would differ from Kakashi-sensei, but if she had, she definitely wouldn't have imagined him being quite so… involved. Despite showing no outward enthusiasm for his new position, he spent their first morning as an official team going over their academy scores with them, testing their basic skills in far more detail than he had during the actual test, and then finally watching them spar against each other.</p><p>"That's enough," he said, stepping between the two boys just as Jiro was about to sock Yobirin in the jaw. "Yobirin, your taijutsu is atrocious. Stay here and practice your kata. Sakura, watch him and correct any mistakes you see."</p><p>The insults, at least, were familiar. To her, that is. Yobirin folded his arms defensively.</p><p>"Jiro, you're with me," Takahiro continued, leading him away by the shoulder. "We need to work on your genjutsu-breaking technique, since you're the only one who can't do it."</p><p>They went off to the other side of the small clearing, leaving Sakura alone with Yobirin.</p><p>"I don't see why I have to do this," he said, turning up his nose at her. "I'm a medic. I'm not even supposed to fight."</p><p>"That's…" she started to say. He wasn't wrong, as such. The rules that governed medical ninja did state that only those who had mastered Shishou's Strength of a Hundred Technique and Creation Rebirth were allowed on the front lines. But the front lines weren't the only place where fighting occurred, and field medics were still expected to be able to defend themselves for long enough to get out of the line of fire.</p><p>Besides, Shishou's rules, though they were strictly enforced in the Medic Corps, applied to medics who were part of the general forces only in spirit. Sakura had been sent on countless dangerous missions - by Shishou herself, no less - before she had come even close to completing the seal. She also seriously doubted anyone would object to sending a medic-nin who didn't have access to Creation Rebirth, but did have some kind of an equally powerful ability, out to fight.</p><p>Regardless, it was a good reminder that she needed to start working on the seal.</p><p>"And how come you don't have to do anything?" Yobirin spoke before she had the chance to. "You think that just because you managed to break one lousy tree, you're better than us now?"</p><p>Sakura bristled. "I didn't say that! Don't put words in my mouth!"</p><p>Whatever retort he was about to spout was interrupted by a glare from their sensei.</p><p>"Che," the boy said under his breath, "if you think I'm going to let you correct me, think again." And, though he looked like he would rather be literally anywhere else, he started going through the kata of the Shorin-ryu style.</p><p><em> 'He doesn't know', </em>she realized. For some reason, she had assumed that her feat of strength during the test would be immediately tied to Tsunade. After just a couple of hours with her new teammates, it became incredibly clear that neither of them knew how she had achieved it. Jiro had ambushed her first thing in the morning and declared it must have been a lucky strike. Yobirin, who should, by rights, have been able to calculate how much force a person of her size could exert without damaging themselves, had only nodded along.</p><p>It was ridiculous. Most genin would, with the appropriate chakra enhancements, be able to put a good dent in that tree, but it would take someone like Rock Lee to break it outright without doing something more.</p><p>Then again, Shishou was far from the only ninja to invent a strength-enhancing technique. Hers was only the most effective. Sakura couldn't say for sure, but she suspected the Hyuuga did something similar - an explosive release of chakra at the moment of impact, just on a much smaller scale - when they weren't busy trying to do internal damage. Since Sakura had yet to reveal her knowledge of medical ninjutsu or create even the smallest of craters in the ground, she supposed there was no reason for anyone to automatically draw a connection to one of the Legendary Sannin. Never mind that every kunoichi in Konoha secretly dreamed of being like her.</p><p> </p><p>They took their first mission the very next day - a D-rank to clean up a park area someone had illicitly used as a training field. The client was the village itself and a bored mission desk chunin reminded them to make sure they removed all the weapons before sending them on their way. Takahiro led them on a short detour to pick up a bucket and three pairs of gloves, and they started the unpleasant task of picking loose senbon and makibishi out of grass.</p><p>"Be careful where you step. I don't want to have to report that my genin got injured on a D-rank," Takahiro said, but didn't otherwise participate.</p><p>Sakura's memories of D-ranks with her old team were mostly characterized by bickering and a lot of whining from Naruto. This team worked in relative silence under their sensei's gaze, with only the occasional conversation between the boys. Jiro apparently had several family members in the genin corps who sometimes took missions like these for the extra income. Yobirin did not, but he had clearly been listening when Iruka-sensei had explained the mission ranking system in class, and was thus utterly unsurprised by the mundane nature of the task.</p><p>Once they were done, Takahiro had them write out their mission reports on the nearest park bench so he could personally go through them. Finding no fault with any of them save for a single spelling mistake in Jiro's, he led them back to the tower to report mission complete.</p><p>Sakura didn't have a bank account yet and didn't particularly want to hand over all her money to her parents, so she opted to receive her payment in cash. The first thing she did with it was buy a pair of gloves, because this little excursion had reminded her of yet another thing she had left in the future.</p><p>It wasn't that she needed gloves. She was perfectly capable of protecting her hands using chakra alone, and no amount of ninja-grade fabric could save the delicate bones and tendons of a human hand from the kind of impact it took to shatter stone. But while they could do nothing about internal damage, they still offered protection from the flying debris her technique tended to kick up, meaning she had one less thing to focus on while using it.</p><p>Besides, she was used to wearing gloves. She had brought them along on every mission up until the war.</p><p>She passed over a full rack of standard fingerless shinobi gloves, the kind with a metal plate on the back that most chunin and jounin wore with their uniforms, and picked up a simple dark-colored pair. It was almost identical to the ones she'd worn before and fit snugly onto her child-sized hands.</p><p>The second thing she did with her D-rank money was to get a haircut.</p><p>"Sakura!" Ino yelled, catching her on the way home. "What have you done to your hair?!"</p><p>Sakura halted in her steps. "This?" she asked, running a hand through the short strands. "It was getting in the way of training, so I decided to cut it."</p><p>The old Ino wouldn't have needed an explanation - <em>hadn't </em>needed an explanation, because she had been there with her at the Forest of Death. Afterwards, she had understood, without ever needing to ask, why Sakura had kept her hair short. This Ino was so young, and though she had been trained to be a kunoichi practically from birth, she had never lived it. Hadn't waited anxiously at the hospital for Chouji to recover from surgery or attended her sensei's funeral. Sakura fully expected her to say something like 'Have you finally realized you'll never be as pretty as me?', maybe taunt her about Sasuke, because that was just how the two of them were.</p><p>She didn't.</p><p>"You could have just put it in a ponytail. You didn't have to chop it all off," she said instead, looking actually put out about it. "Just when it was finally getting long, too."</p><p>Sakura shrugged, unsure what to do with the lack of bickering. "I guess I just wanted a change."</p><p>Ino frowned. "Let me see," she said, grabbing Sakura by the shoulders and pulling her forward so that they were standing right across from each other.</p><p>"Well?" Sakura asked.</p><p>"I guess it's not completely awful," Ino decided, letting go of her. "Looks kinda like when we were kids."</p><p>It occurred to her, suddenly, that this was the first time since she had come to the past that the two of them were having a real one-on-one conversation. She couldn't help but smile.</p><p>"So how's your training going?" she asked, following along to the flower shop. "Has your sensei taught you anything yet?" </p><p> </p><p>As it turned out, Ino's reaction to Sakura's haircut was downright tame compared to her mother's.</p><p>"Look at this!" she complained at the dinner table, palming a handful of Sakura's hair. "All that beautiful hair, just gone. Can you believe this, Kizashi?"</p><p>"I think it looks fine," her father said. "It's just hair. It'll grow back."</p><p>Sakura didn't want it to grow back.</p><p>"You didn't even ask," her mother doubled down. "You could have just told me you wanted a haircut, you know."</p><p>Sakura didn't think anybody had raised such a fuss over her hair the first time around, though it was entirely possible she'd been too busy fretting over Sasuke's situation to notice. Or maybe her mother had simply been distracted by the scrapes and bruises she'd sustained at the Forest of Death.</p><p>"Mom," she said, trying for a patient tone. "It's not such a big deal. I had split ends anyway, and it kept getting in my face during training."</p><p>"About that," her mom said, "how much time can you possibly spend training? You've been coming home so late for the past two weeks. Your sensei doesn't make you do that, does he?"</p><p>Sakura resisted the urge to groan.</p><p>That evening, she rummaged through the storage closet until she found her father's old calligraphy set.</p><p>"Can I borrow this?" she asked, lifting up the small wooden box.</p><p>"What? Oh, sure," her father said. "You can have it. I never use it anyway."</p><p>She prepared the ink stone, having to practically drown the thing in water in order to make enough ink. Then she made a small incision in her left hand and dripped a generous amount of blood into the mixture before healing the cut over. Once her parents went off to bed, she snuck the bowl of makeshift chakra ink into the bathroom. The store-bought stuff would have been better, but it would have taken far more than a couple of D-ranks for her to be able to afford that.</p><p>She dipped a wide brush into the ink, carefully infusing it with chakra, and started drawing the elaborate lines of the Strength of a Hundred Seal on her body.</p><p>Her fingers did not tremble. She didn't allow them, any more than she would while conducting surgery. The last time she had done this, she'd had a scroll with a pattern to work off of and Tsunade's strict supervision. If she had messed up back then, her master would have pointed it out immediately. If she did so now, she might not realize it until the day she tried to activate the seal.</p><p>Slowly, carefully, she traced the brush across her torso and from her shoulders to her wrists. The final lines were the spiraling ones of the Creation Rebirth technique. She appraised the result in the mirror, still holding the chakra in place. It certainly <em>looked</em> the same, except she had placed the center at a different spot. She hoped her chakra control had improved enough that it wouldn't take her three years to complete the seal this time, in which case having it materialize on her forehead wouldn't do at all. </p><p>Satisfied, she pulled on the chakra in order to complete the final step. The ink slid along with it, tightening and compressing until all that remained was a large diamond shape below her collarbones. The ink would wash off, but the seal would remain.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I swear to god Shikako isn't supposed to be completely absent in this story! I just wanted to post what I already had because otherwise I'll probably end up spending another month proof-reading instead of, y'know, writing.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>My writing process goes something like this: I write about 200 words, then proofread it, then write another 200 words, then proofread the whole thing again, and it goes on like this until I finish a chapter. Meaning the beginning gets proofread like a dozen times and the end only once. I'm starting to think this might be a slightly inefficient process.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Konoha mission desk was a 24-hour operation, always assigning missions and accepting reports, but there was an unspoken expectation that low-priority missions be processed during regular office hours. D-rank missions in particular tended to be assigned in the morning and reported complete in the afternoon of the same day. It was on one such occasion that Sakura's team joined the line to hand in their paperwork and was immediately flanked by Team Ten.</p>
<p>"Sakura!" Ino said, leaning in to stage-whisper in her ear. "Did you hear about Shikako?"</p>
<p>Just like every previous time the topic of Shikako Nara had come up, Sakura wasn't quite sure how to respond. <em>'What did she do?'</em> was her first thought. She tamped down on it. If it was something serious, Ino wouldn't be bringing it up in public where everyone could hear.</p>
<p>"Did something happen to her?" she asked instead.</p>
<p>"No, no, nothing like that," Ino assured. "Shikamaru told me her team is going on a C-rank. Can you believe it? It's only been a week!"</p>
<p>Sakura could believe it just fine, if only because the same thing had happened to her.</p>
<p>"Troublesome," Shikamaru said, slouching even further than he had been already as though to signal that he wanted no part in this conversation.</p>
<p>"A C-rank, huh?" Sakura said, doing her best to feign surprise. "It's really early, isn't it?"</p>
<p>"Yeah," Ino said. "They already left yesterday morning. I just didn't get a chance to tell you until now."</p>
<p>Sakura reached the front of the line. "Team One reporting mission complete," she said.</p>
<p>The mission desk chunin barely glanced at their reports before stamping them and yelling 'Next!'. She tucked away her mission payment and split off from her teammates with a halfhearted goodbye, waiting for the others to be done as well.</p>
<p>"I'm so jealous," Ino said once they were outside, heading towards the street where both their families lived. "I asked Asuma-sensei for a C-rank and he just grumbled something about how we haven't done enough training as a team yet. Between Shikamaru and Chouji, it's going to take us <em>years</em> to do enough training."</p>
<p>Sakura laughed. "I'm sure it won't take that long. Maybe your sensei will change his mind if you ask him again?"</p>
<p>"Hmph! I sure hope so," Ino said.</p>
<p>In truth, Sakura didn't know anything about Team Ten's first C-rank aside from the fact that it had to take place reasonably soon in order for them to qualify for the upcoming chunin exam - and, if she knew Ino at all, she had every intention of pestering Asuma-sensei about it until he relented. That was just her nature.</p>
<p>Now that she thought about it, she didn't actually know what mission Team Seven was assigned either. Strongly suspected, sure, but didn't know.</p>
<p>"By the way," she said, "do you know where Shikako's team is going?"</p>
<p>Ino shrugged. "Shikamaru didn't say. Somewhere outside the Land of Fire, I think. Several weeks long."</p>
<p>"Oh. Did he at least say what kind of mission it is?"</p>
<p>Ino seemed to think about it. "No," she said. "I bet that slacker didn't even bother to ask her."</p>
<p>Sakura groaned. "I guess we won't find out until they come back."</p>
<p>Assuming they did come back. She had no way of knowing for sure, but given what little information she had, there was no reason to think this version of Team Seven wouldn't have been sent on the same mission to escort Tazuna to the Land of Waves. They had departed at around the same time, and a C-rank that took several weeks to complete was more likely than not to involve bodyguarding. The other common forms of low-rank missions - fighting bandits or delivering messages - were usually slotted in at a week or less including travel time. Certain types of investigations and prisoner capture could take longer, but for all of Kakashi-sensei's lackadaisical approach to teaching, she could hardly see him springing something like that on a newly-minted genin team with no experience.</p>
<p>"Ugh. You're probably right," Ino said.</p>
<p>"I just hope nothing goes wrong," Sakura said.</p>
<p>Ino blinked. "Why would it? They have Sasuke-kun on their team."</p>
<p>All Sakura could respond with was <em>you're right, haha, how silly of me,</em> never mind that Sasuke had nearly been killed in Wave Country. The memory of crying over his body, limp and bloody and clearly without a pulse, was still fresh in her mind after all this time. A part of her dearly wished she could go back to that moment, re-do it with all of her current medical knowledge, just so she could figure out how on earth he'd managed to survive that.<strong><br/></strong></p>
<p>A bigger part of her was just worried. Maybe it was irrational; when all was said and done, the boys had been fine the first time around with little to no input from her. They would probably still be fine with a different kunoichi on their team. </p>
<p>She couldn't help but worry, all the same.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The days passed peacefully, with a subtle undercurrent of impending doom. The Akatsuki were out there, Pain and Obito and Black Zetsu working on three separate plots that would all bring the world to ruin in their own unique ways. The Sound-Sand Invasion was coming up in just over two months. Orochimaru may have set his sights on Sasuke already, and if not, then he was going to very soon. Kabuto was in the village at this very moment, spying for him.<strong><br/></strong></p>
<p>Funny, then, that the biggest threat to Sakura's plans was currently a twelve-year-old genin.</p>
<p>"Hey, mom," she said one evening, entering the kitchen. "Can I help you with anything?"</p>
<p>Her mother eyed her a bit suspiciously. "I suppose so," she said. "Can you peel these for me?"</p>
<p>Sakura grabbed a knife and started working on the carrots.</p>
<p>"So, uh... how was your day?" she asked, trying to make small talk.</p>
<p>The two of them didn't often talk. Not like this. It wasn't that they had a bad relationship; they had just never had much to talk about outside of bare practicalities like cooking or laundry. At the age of twelve, Sakura had fancied herself an adult, a real ninja, and had been annoyed at any attempt on her parents' part to be involved in her life. Later, she had become Tsunade's apprentice and simply hadn't had the time.<strong><br/></strong></p>
<p>Her mother didn't seem to think much of it, telling her all about the grocery shopping she had done this morning, the acquaintances she had met at the market and the illicit pregnancy of the next-door neighbor.</p>
<p>"And honestly," she said, "isn't thirty-five a bit late to be having your first child?" </p>
<p>Sakura made a vaguely agreeing sound. "Speaking of children," she said, "do you remember how Shikako and I first met?"</p>
<p>It was a weak segue, but the best she could think of. If nothing else, there probably weren't many civilians whose first response to somebody saying something strange was 'infiltrator'.</p>
<p>"Shikako-chan?" her mother echoed. "Didn't you meet her at the same time as Ino-chan?"</p>
<p>"That sounds about right. At our first kunoichi class, right?" she asked, trying to brush over the fact that she knew nothing about her supposed childhood friend. "It's been such a long time that I barely remember it."</p>
<p>"Time flies so fast," mom said, a nostalgic tinge to her voice. Then she glanced over at what Sakura was doing. "Sakura! I told you to peel the carrots, not to slice half of them off! Here, let me show you how to do it."</p>
<p>No matter how much she prodded afterwards, she received no more information about the Nara girl. A pity, because anyone who was in a better position to answer her questions was also going to notice if she asked. She even briefly considered breaking into the tower archives and looking up her ninja file before realizing what a dangerous idea it was. As the Hokage's apprentice, she could have simply walked into the room and people would have assumed she had a good reason to be there. Here and now, she could do no such thing, and getting caught looking at classified documents would be more suspicious than a thousand out-of-place questions.</p>
<p>Besides, the primary purpose of those files was to make it easier for the tower staff to assign missions, which meant they contained a shinobi's mission history, known abilities and, in the case of recent graduates, academy scores. Those things were all fairly self-explanatory: as Shikamaru's twin sister, she probably used the same jutsu, and she was the top-ranked kunoichi, so she had to be an above-average student. Ino had even said something to that effect on team assignment day. No, what Sakura really needed was personal information. Maybe somewhere in the depths of the intelligence division - or worse, ROOT - there were files that detailed the private habits and relationships of Konoha shinobi, but if so, Sakura didn't know how to get to them and didn't think anyone would go through that much effort for a mere genin.</p>
<p>Well. Maybe if that genin was Naruto or Sasuke.</p>
<p>In the same vein, she entertained the idea of seeking out Kabuto early for a whole two seconds before discarding it. Whether or not she could defeat him in a fight, she certainly couldn't do it within the village walls without being noticed - and then she would have to provide an explanation as to why she had killed this perfectly nice boy from the medic corps without provocation.</p>
<p>It was decisions like these, more than anything, that made her wish Kakashi-sensei had survived the fight with Kaguya. There was no question in her mind that if he had, he would have been the one sent to the past instead of her. And maybe then, she would have died along with her entire doomed future, but he would have been a better choice for this mission than her in every possible way. He was one of the village's most elite jounin, just as established now as he would be in a few years' time, and actually had the skill to operate in secrecy. Sakura's own stealth skills were almost entirely theoretical.</p>
<p>Most importantly, he was such a weirdo that him acting suspiciously wouldn't even be on anyone's radar.</p>
<p>In the end, it was a useless line of thought. Kakashi-sensei was dead - no, he was alive, but with no memory of her or of the future she had to avert. What she really needed to do right now was avoid notice and wait for Shishou to return.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>After two full weeks as Team One's sensei, Takahiro finally got around to reserving them a training ground for the month. This meant that they no longer had to meet at the tower every morning and then walk to whichever training ground happened to be free that day. It also meant nobody was going to come by and fix it until the reservation was over, so Sakura was probably going to have to be the one to fill in the holes in the ground.</p>
<p>"What do you call this technique, again?" Takahiro asked, eyeing the latest crater. It was on the small side, compared to what she was really capable of.</p>
<p>"Cherry Blossom Impact," she answered.</p>
<p>He sighed. "Of course. Anyway, you need to work on doing it faster. It doesn't matter how hard you can punch if you can't actually hit your target."</p>
<p>She scowled. "I know that, sensei."</p>
<p>It was probably unreasonable to get annoyed at him for basing his advice on the skill level she intentionally pretended to have. It was just frustrating, having to spend her time working on skills she had mastered ages ago when she could be doing actual training. The D-ranks weren't much better. She was starting to get the feeling that muscling her way into the general forces may not have been such a great idea after all. </p>
<p>Then again, if she had entered the medic corps instead, she still would have had to study material she already knew. If anything, she would have even less free time in the overscheduled and tightly regimented medical program than she did under the tutelage of a single jounin, with the added drawback of not getting paid.</p>
<p>She looked over at the boys, who were busy practicing tree walking. Yobirin seemed to be making decent progress, though Sakura was surprised he hadn't gotten it on his first try considering he ostensibly had the chakra control necessary for medical jutsu. The most she could say for Jiro was that he had yet to seriously injure himself trying.</p>
<p>If she was honest with herself, neither of them were significantly worse at this than Naruto or even Sasuke had been. The issue was that they had far smaller chakra reserves, and therefore couldn't spend all day training the way her old teammates had. She could empathize with that, if nothing else.</p>
<p>The following week, Sakura swung by the Yamanaka Flower Shop, partially to ask Ino if she had heard anything new about the mission Team Seven was on, partially just to see her, and was informed by her father that she'd finally gotten her wish of going on a C-rank.</p>
<p>"She should be back next week," he said, filling a vase with fresh water. "Sorry you came here for nothing."</p>
<p>Her thirteenth birthday therefore came and went with minimal fanfare. She would have preferred it with no fanfare at all. Maybe if she managed to reach her eighteenth birthday, then she would go out of her way to celebrate.</p>
<p>When Ino did come back, she made her presence known by barging into Sakura's room unannounced. Either mom or dad must have let her into the house.</p>
<p>"You," she said firmly, closing the door behind her, "have been holding out on me."</p>
<p>"Huh?" Sakura asked, putting down the weapon pouch she'd been reorganizing. "What are you talking about?"</p>
<p>"You know exactly what I'm talking about," Ino said. "Don't even pretend."</p>
<p>Sakura looked at her, taken aback. Did she know something? Did she suspect? Had Sakura made a mistake somewhere along the way, said something that tipped her off?</p>
<p>But the look on Ino's face wasn't suspicious or even really angry. Not the kind of angry she would be with an enemy. And she was here, confronting Sakura alone in her home rather than reporting to her father or sensei, which hopefully meant things were still salvageable.</p>
<p>Hopefully.</p>
<p>"I really don't," she said, forcing her pulse to lower and her fist to unclench. </p>
<p>"Oh, really?" Ino said, hands on her hips. "The new training you've been doing - does that ring any bells?"</p>
<p>Oh. That.</p>
<p>"You mean the strength technique?" she asked, rhetorically. It wasn't like she had expected it to remain a secret. She'd just thought it would come out on a mission or during the chunin exams - but clearly, the Konoha rumor mill was far more efficient than that.</p>
<p>"Of course that's what I mean," Ino said. "Or have you been hiding even more secret jutsu from us?"</p>
<p>"Uhm. Well. It's not really a jutsu," she said, glossing over that second part. Now probably wasn't a good time to bring up that she was a fully-qualified medic. "It's like... you know how we learned about chakra enhancements at the academy? It's like that, but more efficient." It wasn't exactly true - the standard enhancements were only a way to increase the body's natural strength by channeling chakra to the muscles, which was very different from converting it straight into kinetic energy - but she wasn't quite lying either.</p>
<p>Ino frowned. "Okay, but where on earth did you learn that? Chizue - you know, that girl who's friends with Jiro's cousin - said you could punch straight through tree trunks. I thought she was full of it at first, but then I heard the same thing from Tsutsuji-"</p>
<p>"I've been working on it for a while," Sakura interrupted. It was a prepared response, the one she'd come up with weeks ago in case anybody questioned how she'd seemingly acquired a new ability overnight.</p>
<p>The troubled expression on Ino's face didn't go away, only becoming more pronounced.</p>
<p>"I just... well... you have your Mind-Body Switch," Sakura continued, momentum carrying her forward, "and Shikako has Shadow Jutsu, so I would have been the only one in our group who didn't have anything but the academy jutsu - me and Jiro, I guess." Shikamaru had even described her that way once - a kunoichi with no particular talent. "So I figured, since I have really good chakra control, maybe I could..."</p>
<p>She trailed off, not sure if her explanation made things better or worse. And boy, did she hope that Shikako could actually use the Nara clan jutsu, or else she'd just dug herself into a hole she couldn't escape.</p>
<p>There was a long pause.</p>
<p>"Well, there's always Naruto," Ino said, not entirely without humor. Sakura suppressed a sigh of relief.</p>
<p>"Oh, right," she said. "I forgot about him." Forgot that nobody knew about the Shadow Clones yet, more like. And the Kyuubi.</p>
<p>Ino snorted. Her body language finally relaxed, and she leaned on the window sill, looking outside. When she spoke, her voice was lower than before. "You never even said anything. I didn't think..." She cut herself off. "If you had, Shikako and I would have helped you train."</p>
<p>She looked... almost ashamed.</p>
<p>"I know you would," Sakura said hastily, though she knew no such thing. The purpose of that whole speech had been to explain away the inconsistencies in her actions, to make it sound like there was a good reason for her to try to recreate Tsunade's technique. Ino clearly took it as her being insecure. "I just... didn't want to tell anyone about it yet," she invented quickly. "In case it didn't end up working after all."</p>
<p>When Ino left Sakura's home that day, she still didn't look happy, but at least she probably wasn't about to report her for spying.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The second week of April came and brought with it the return of Team Seven, which Sakura had been waiting for and dreading in equal measure. Waiting, because she would finally get a confirmation, one way or another, as to how their mission had gone - and dreading, because it meant she would have to interact with Shikako Nara again.</p>
<p><em>She is your friend,</em> Sakura reminded herself as she opened the front door. <em>Act friendly.</em></p>
<p>"Good morning," she said, plastering a smile onto her face. "Come in."</p>
<p>"Morning," the Nara girl said, entering Sakura's home in her full shinobi gear. "You... got a haircut?"</p>
<p>"Huh? Oh, yeah," Sakura said, brushing a hand through the strands. It's been a long enough time now that nobody commented on it anymore - not that anyone other than her mom and Ino had cared in the first place - but now that she thought about it, this had to be Shikako's first time seeing the change. <em>Act friendly. </em>"Well? What do you think?" she asked, even posing a little.</p>
<p>Shikako eyed her for a moment longer, then smiled. "It suits you," she said.</p>
<p>"Thanks," Sakura said, even though in reality, she couldn't care less what she thought.</p>
<p>On the bright side, her presence here probably meant that her mission had gone fine, or at least no worse than it had originally. Surely, if one of her teammates had died or been badly injured, she would be acting a little more distraught.</p>
<p>"Sorry for coming by so early," she said, following Sakura upstairs. "I wasn't sure when your team usually meets."</p>
<p>Sakura glanced at the nearest clock. It was half past seven.</p>
<p>"We meet at five," she said flatly. She and both of her teammates had voiced exactly what they thought of that arrangement, and their sensei was completely unmoved. "Today is our day off."</p>
<p>"That's... early," Shikako said in what sounded like genuine sympathy, though given who her team's sensei was, she basically had the opposite problem. "Have you already been out training today?"</p>
<p>"No," Sakura said. "I was just about to grab my gear and leave."</p>
<p>"Oh," she said. "Long day at training yesterday, then?"</p>
<p>Sakura sent her a questioning look. "No?" she said, half of her attention on tightening the strap of her thigh pouch. "No longer than usual, at least."</p>
<p>She waited for the Nara to explain why she was asking, but she never did, only smiled blandly as she watched Sakura pull on her gloves. A second passed, and then another, until it was too late to ask without sounding awkward.</p>
<p>Dammit. This was so much easier with Ino. Sakura didn't know this girl, didn't know how she normally acted or how to interpret her closed-off expression.</p>
<p>"I was going to go to the training field," she said to fill the silence, then remembered belatedly that she did, in fact, have a guest in the house. "Did you, uh, want to drink something?"</p>
<p>"No, no," Shikako said. "I just wanted to see how you were doing. I still have to go hand in my mission report."</p>
<p>Sakura brightened. "Oh, right!" she said, latching onto the easy conversation topic. If she didn't ask now, she would just have to get the story out of Ino later. "You were on a C-rank, right? How did it go?"</p>
<p>At a slow pace, the walk from Sakura's home to the tower was just long enough for an abridged version of events. "Our mission was to protect a bridge builder from the Land of Waves," Shikako started. She told her about the ambush on the road, about the first fight with Zabuza and how Haku had intervened to rescue him, amusingly skirting over Kakashi-sensei's chakra exhaustion. Then she spoke about Gatou's oppression of the locals, how high the food prices had been and how poor the people were. How Kakashi-sensei had anticipated Zabuza's return and trained them in the meantime.</p>
<p>It was all as Sakura remembered it, and she was just about to exhale a sigh of relief that nothing had changed for the worse.</p>
<p>"And then Gatou turned on Zabuza and Haku," Shikako concluded, "so we formed an alliance and Zabuza killed him."</p>
<p>"You... formed an alliance?" Sakura echoed. Did the final battle go differently, or was 'alliance' some sort of a euphemism for Zabuza, gravely injured from his fight with Kakashi and armed only with a kunai in his mouth, taking out Gatou and all of his men before falling over and dying?</p>
<p>"Yeah, kinda. Then we still had to protect the client until the bridge was complete, but nobody else came to attack us."</p>
<p>"Oh," Sakura said. "But what happened to that guy, Zabuza? And that other ninja you fought?"</p>
<p>Shikako glanced over at her. "They hung around," she said. "Actually, they're probably still in Wave Country, since Zabuza said he still had business with the shipping company."</p>
<p>Once again, Sakura wasn't quite sure how to react. Luckily, this was the moment when they reached the Hokage Tower. "That's great," she said. "That none of you were hurt, I mean. Fighting an A-rank missing nin... it sounds really scary."</p>
<p>After exchanging a few more words, she waved Shikako goodbye and made her escape.</p>
<p>If nothing else, Naruto was probably happy that Haku had survived.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Sakura's parents are never shown in the series outside of some cracky filler, but the way she gets annoyed at her mother telling her what to do in her first appearance and tells Sasuke that Naruto is lucky not to have parents (???) makes me think they don't have a great relationship. On the other hand, she's clearly portrayed as having grown up in a cushy home and not understanding her teammates' troubles at all, so it's probably just her being a brat. Still, I can understand why so many fanfic writers go the 'Sakura's home life is horrifically abusive' route.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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